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My boyfriend and I have taken a liking to exploring cities on Turtle Island. We are saving for a bigger trip - we're thinking a Euro-holiday - but we needed something to get us through the winter months. Last week, we toyed with the idea of going to New York on Monday, booked on Thursday, and were on a train through the Adirondacks on Friday.
We settled into our hotel (the Hilton in the Financial District), which had a view of the re-building of the World Trade Centre.
We knew we only had 2 days, and I don't think we could have squeezed more into our first day if we tried: breakfast in Time Square; a three hour jaunt through the Met (which, as it turns out, wasn't enough); dessert for lunch on 5th Avenue; Columbia University; shopping in SoHo; and pizza for dinner at Lombardi's, one of five spots vying for the best pizza in NYC.
We got to the hotel by 9, plopped down on the luxe bed, and couldn't get up.
The next day we, once again, were on the train to Time Square. We saw a hockey game in the legendary Madison Square Garden. Then, we figured we would fit in one more museum. Can you guess which one? The National Museum of the American Indian.
Although their main exhibit, Infinity of Nations, was cool (above), I preferred the modern art works of Carl Beam. So much so that I excitedly skipped over to the next room when I saw a sneak peek, inadvertently skipping the Woodlands--which, apparently, means me--section. And, as long as I'm being honest, I held a bit of a grudge after not finding "Algonquin" amongst the names of tribes surrounding the Infinity of Nations sign. An afternoon at Century 21, resulting in a DVF sweater and Tory Burch blouse, capped off a great day.
(I'll now skip over the part where we ended up at TGI Friday's for dinner, eating crappy expensive food, and getting depressed while adding up all the money we'd spent. Ooops, there it is.)
While NYC was a lot of fun (I can't wait to go to MoMA and back to Century 21), of all the cities we've visited, our hearts are still in Boston...
The Hunger Games Trilogy (Suzanne Collins)
Confession time: I love me a good magical world. When I was younger, I devoured Harry Potter, eagerly awaiting each new release, and Lord of the Rings. Over the past year, I've fallen in love with authors who tell a seemingly real life story and inject it with a hint of mysticism: Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera.
The Hunger Games trilogy, while not quite magic, was definitely out of this world. The back cover reviews from Stephen King and Stephanie Meyer piqued my interest. Although I've never read the Twilight Saga, the movies are, admittedly, a guilty pleasure of mine.
Imagine my surprise when I crack the cover of The Hunger Games to find that it is more a story about our people than Twilight ever was, even with its depiction of the Quileute nation (or, more accurately, in spite of...). Skin colour is scarcely mentioned in the novels, except in reference to the crazy Capitol-ites who dye their skin green and blue. Instead, the Hunger Games is a story of oppression, bravery, love, war, innocence, healing, and hunting.
I fervently flipped through the pages, gasping every now and again as R.J. demanded, "What did Katniss do now?" I suggest you pick up the books and learn for yourself!
Now, as with so many great books, I can only hope the filmmakers get it right...
One of my most vivid memories of being 5 years old involves Ovide Mercredi.
The whole school was called to the gym. I was standing around on the bleachers doing things kids do, when word floated around that they were picking one of us to be on T.V.
I turned to see a boy, arm outstretched, pointing his finger silently at me. What? my look asked. "Pick her," he responded. "Her mom works at the band office!" Childhood logic. I playfully swatted his arm away, hoping to divert the unwanted attention, but like a slingshot it swung gently back around.
A series of events followed--probably involving my navy and green plaid dress with white tights--and the next thing I knew, I was seated next to Ovide at a table fighting boredom for what seemed like hours. An equally vivid memory was returning from the event in the gym to find my class on recess and having to drink my juice and eat my sandwich alone inside.
I now know I played some teeny tiny (literally) role in the parallel process to the RCAP proceedings.
Now, over 20 years later, my path crossed Ovide's again when he delivered a lecture at the university where I work. I debated whether or not to attend. My head was saying no; I was tired, missed my boyfriend, had been spending lots of time on campus. But my heart said yes. I had always felt a connection to Ovide for providing me with 15 minutes of 5 year old fame, and I liked what he had to say at the Crown-First Nations Gathering earlier this week.
So, I went. And am I ever glad I did.
Ovide is an eloquent and humble speaker. He didn't lecture with key points, nor in a linear fashion, nor by presenting any sort of expertise (all of the "qualities" we're used to in the academy). Instead, he told stories about his spirituality and how it manifested in his political career and rise to National Chief.
"You can't lead your people just because you're educated," he stated. "You need more. From your own people." This is something I'm always curious about. How can scholars affect real change? How do we "live in both worlds"? How can we stay grounded in our communities and traditions while balancing the rigor required by academia?
But the point he made that had the most profound effect on me was related to the difference between his generation and mine. "My generation was labeled the 'grievance generation.' Indians became known as problem people, not people with problems," Ovide said. "But your generation is different. Your generation knows the solution. Your generation will make the change."
Whether knowing it or not, Ovide challenged me to rise to the occasion for our people when I was 5 years old. And tonight, two decades later, he has challenged me again.
Only a tuft
of black curly hair
is seen
from the other side
of the counter
And a small hand
holding a bag of Nibs
and exactly
one dollar in change
"No tax."
[Insert here
any settler comment
about stealing
from the taxpayer
ducking responsibility
or not playing fair]
I live on this place
named off-reserve
walking on
hollow apologies
empty declarations
and many, many
broken promises
The elders told us,
"We are at home
wherever we are."
And I know this much
is true.
"New Journeys" Terri-Lynn
I don't know how music reviewers do it. Just last week I excitedly downloaded the latest album of my favourite artist, but I couldn't really "get into it" at first listen. Instead, I had to listen to it beginning to end at least four times before I could truly have a relationship with the music.
With Terri-Lynn's "New Journeys," it took mere minutes to forge a relationship with her songs.
I popped the CD in on one of the first cool days this fall. R.J. and I had just returned home after an afternoon of hiking (and filming! We're throwing around the idea of starting a vlog together) in the Gatineau Park. He read in the bedroom, and I started dinner by chopping vegetables in the kitchen.
New Journeys was the perfect soundtrack for cooking. Terri-Lynn's soft, yet haunting, voice and the rhythmic ebb and flow of the music guided my blade as it sliced through fall root vegetables. When we sat down to eat, with New Journeys on repeat, R.J. agreed that the music we listened to created a calm and quietly chipper kitchen environment. In this way, we both had a relationship with Terri-Lynn's music.
Haida art, particularly during the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, has become one of the primary ways Canadians and people around the world essentialize and understand First Nations. New Journeys confuses what Canadians think they know about the Haida nation by combining some traditional sounds with a contemporary spin.
In addition to reading All That We Say Is Ours and visiting the Haida: Life. Spirit. Art. exhibit by Robert Davidson (also the site where I spotted the tall, gorgeous Terri-Lynn from afar!), New Journeys adds to this Anishinabekwe's education about the rich history and amazing artistry of Haida people.
And I look forward to continuing this learning journey (pun totally intended) to Terri-Lynn's soundtrack.
Like most little girls in my generation, and the ones growing up today, I loved Disney princesses. And while I enjoyed films starring the classic princesses - like Snow White and Cinderella - I was absolutely enchanted by the late 80s/early 90s Disney princess trifecta: The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin.
I adored every Disney princess... Except for one.
Pocahontas.
As a ten year old girl growing up on the rez who had Jasmin and Belle Barbies (although I didn't like them as much as my other Barbies because they were larger; I'll save that for another post), you think I would have been delighted that a new movie was coming out that featured a princess who was like me, right? Wrong!
To this day, I have never watched Pocahontas. In fact, the most I've seen of the movie are the scenes that make up the background of this feminist, spoken word poem, Once Tongue Tied*:
To be honest, from what I can remember of being that age, none of the other girls at school on the rez were that interested in Pocahontas either. I think there were one of two reasons for this lack of interest in Pocahontas:
- Pocahontas didn't actually reflect me or the girls my age. Yes, we had brown skin and long, dark hair; but, no, we didn't sing to the raccoons and wear teeny tiny buckskin dresses. While other little girls around the world might think Pocahontas a beautiful, exotic princess...
- We were more interested in the pale-skinned and blonde-haired princesses. The ones who far outnumber the two brown princesses in the photo above. From what we were taught by Disney and other media, they were the real beauties - not the princess who was supposed to represent us.
It's only been in recent years - I'd say since when I started grad school in 2007 - that I've begun to interrogate how this "Pocahontas complex" and other childhood images of Indians have affected me.
There seemed to be no end to my life on the rez in sight, until my mom got a job in the city and we moved. Although I would never go as far as to say I was "ashamed" of being one of only a handful of Anishinabekwe attending my high school in the Ottawa area, I also wasn't wearing my moccasins to class or a Native Pride cap. It felt that the easiest way to make it through high school was to go status quo, which for me meant being simply "Canadian" (whatever that is).
I noticed this unsettling ambivalence creep into my life again last year when I was asked, along with my fellow Word Warriors, to present Gerald Vizenor with a Pendleton blanket.
(Don't ask about my face.)
My parents had a Pendleton blanket when I was growing up. I remember the day my parents brought my baby brother home from the hospital; we were in the midst of a heat wave and O.J. Simpson was running from the cops. My parents were lying on a bed in the basement, my eight pound brother between them. The Pendleton blanket they lay on was wrinkly so tried to fluff it out.
"Don't!" my parents both yelled, raising their arms to protect the baby.
"You can knock the air out of him," my dad warned. Oops.
And that's one of the memories that came to me the day I saw Gerald Vizenor's Pendleton blanket.
When you grow up Native, Pocahontas and Pendletons aren't just princesses and blankets. They carry memories, insecurities, familiarity and _______.*I first heard of Once Tongue Tied on Sociological Images. When searching the site today, there was another interesting piece on masculinity and gender in Disney, check it out.
This is week 1 of the Odawa Native Friendship Centre's Weight Loss Challenge!
My Skinny Nish program hasn't exactly been going perfectly. But, rather than waste my breath (or finger strength?) providing a litany of excuses, I'm going to focus on how I've found new motivation.
I got an email from Odawa's Healthy Living Coordinator a few weeks ago about their Weight Loss Challenge. The rules are simple: pay $30, weigh in (body fat % and muscle %), and after 10 weeks the females and males who've lost the most body fat and gained the most muscle win the big bucks.
I forwarded the email to R.J. and added: "This sounds perfect! We can get motivated to eat better and exercise, and get more involved in the community--two things we want to do." He agreed, and days later we stepped onto some fancy scale at the friendship centre.
So, as I said, this week is 1/10. My progress? I've returned to my Skinny Nish principles: 1) follow Christine Avanti's Skinny Chicks program; 2) run; and 3) yoga. (Well, so far I've done one run and have been eating the Skinny Chicks way.)
As an added challenge, I'm going to be on the road talking to First Nations students about their post-secondary options for 5-6 weeks in October and November. I won't have the opportunity to prepare meals at home and it might be hard to find time to exercise travelling between hotels. But, right hand on my Skinny Chicks cookbook, I solemnly swear to do my best!
And, if all goes well, I'll be pounds lighter and dollars richer by Christmas.
